![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0012ff14-614.jpg\"\/)
\nAn order for costs was made against Denis O’Brien<\/p>\n
Two human rights solicitors have been awarded more than \u20ac400,000 each in damages after a High Court jury found they were defamed by businessman Denis O’Brien and his spokesman, James Morrissey, almost ten years ago.<\/p>\n
They are among the largest awards of damages for defamation in this country.<\/p>\n
The jury found that Darragh Mackin and Gavin Booth, from Phoenix Law, a human rights firm in Belfast, had been defamed by a press release issued in October 2016.<\/p>\n
The statement, from Mr Morrissey, was in response to a report on media ownership in Ireland.<\/p>\n
Mr Mackin and Mr Booth were co-authors of the report commissioned by then Sinn F\u00e9in MEP Lynn Boylan.<\/p>\n
The press release said that “Sinn F\u00e9in\/IRA certainly got the report they paid for”.<\/p>\n
Mr Mackin and Mr Booth said the statement meant they received payment from the IRA and implied they were dishonourable, unprofessional, lacked integrity and were unfit to be solicitors.<\/p>\n
Watch: The jury found Darragh Mackin and Gavin Booth had been defamed by a press release<\/p>\n
\n
After deliberating for two hours and 20 minutes, the jury found this sentence meant the solicitors had acted for an unlawful organisation – the IRA.<\/p>\n
It awarded each man \u20ac270,000 in general damages and almost \u20ac142,000 in aggravated damages – a total of \u20ac411,750 each.<\/p>\n
An order for costs was also made against Mr Morrissey and Mr O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n
\nAn order for costs was made against Denis O’Brien<\/p>\n
In a statement, Johnsons Solicitors said the press release advanced serious and entirely baseless allegations against Mr Booth and Mr Mackin.<\/p>\n
It said they were both highly respected human rights lawyers and the allegations had no foundation whatsoever.<\/p>\n
Solicitor Karl Rooney, for the two men, said the award of substantial and aggravated damages was a public vindication of Mr Booth\u2019s and Mr Mackin\u2019s reputation and professional standing.<\/p>\n
He said it underscored the gravity of the defamatory allegations and reaffirmed such unfounded attacks on individuals who serve the justice system should not be tolerated.<\/p>\n
Mr Mackin said it had been a very difficult journey to live with very damaging allegations for the past decade.<\/p>\n
But the result, he said, showed it was not “the size of the dog in the fight, it was the size of the fight in the dog”.<\/p>\n
Mr Mackin said the allegations levelled against them were the most serious that anyone could imagine.<\/p>\n
He pointed out that human rights lawyers had been killed in Northern Ireland for being aligned with their clients.<\/p>\n
Mr Mackin said there were very serious and real-life ramifications to words such as these.<\/p>\n
Words like these put people\u2019s lives in danger, he said, and the award of damages reflected that.<\/p>\n
Mr Booth said the case had gone on far too long.<\/p>\n
He said it could have been deal with much earlier, but instead they were made to go through every court to get justice.<\/p>\n
Finally, he said, they had been given justice.<\/p>\n
Mr Booth said it was always concerning when you are taking someone on in court, but they were right from day one and had been vindicated.<\/p>\n
The men were just doing their job, he added, and Mr Morrissey and Mr O\u2019Brien had chosen to defame them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two human rights solicitors have been awarded more than \u20ac400,000 each in damages after a High Court jury…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-152321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}